So, I decided to make it a dedicated Bitcoin miner. Though it was a capable gamer, the EVGA Nvidia GT430 in it just couldn't hack it as a miner. I then replaced it with a Sapphire Radeon HD6850 and this itself lead me to another issue. Though it was able to handle gaming with the GT430, the "el cheapo", made-in-Taiwan-special 500W Apevia Java Power PSU (not 80 Plus rated) in the rig started giving off burning odor. It couldn't handle the constant 99% mining load put on the HD6850. I ended up getting an 80 Plus-rated Corsair GS600 PSU:

With a constant 99% load, the GPU does really get hot even without overclocking. The space in between the SSD and the HDD where air is pushed in from the lower 12mm front panel fan is perfect for a spare 80mm LED fan to create a push/pull fan configuration directed towards the HD6850 video card. Note that it is suspended using zip ties and angled towards the video card:

It's a mining rig (not gaming) and it's not supposed to look pretty but it was born that way . All the LED fans including the Zalman LED CPU cooler and the red CCFL came from my computer parts bin which would have otherwise been collecting dust. Heck, I didn't even realized that the Corsair GS600 has a blue LED in it when I bought it. I just grabbed the cheapest 80 Plus-rated 500W-600W PSU available at a local retailer:

Well, it paid off. I'm getting 250 Mhash/s with the Sapphire Radeon HD6850 (a mid-range card) and no more burning odor stinking up the room:

Just to get a perspective, my Nvidia GT430 only does about 20 Mhash/s and each of my EVGA Nvidia GTS450 cards (SLI) in my main rig only do around 45 Mhash/s. In fact, the mid-range Radeon HD6850 has at least twice the hash power of the high-end Nvidia GTX680 which cost about four times more. The architecture of AMD Radeon cards is just well-suited to handle Bitcoin algorithms than Nvidia cards do (very nerdy technical stuff).

Bitcoin is still rocket science to most of us , even the terminology as cryptocurrency, virtual currency, bitcoin mining still is pure gibberish.....although it gives me a faint idea but not much...From the simplified definition of bit coin which is a sort of mathematical money system driven by a code still is pure jargon..

Kulukuy , would you mind if you explain this bitcoin in plain tagalog and english...

Bitcoin is still rocket science to most of us , even the terminology as cryptocurrency, virtual currency, bitcoin mining still is pure gibberish.....although it gives me a faint idea but not much...From the simplified definition of bit coin which is a sort of mathematical money system driven by a code still is pure jargon..

Kulukuy , would you mind if you explain this bitcoin in plain tagalog and english...

Bitcoin is still rocket science to most of us , even the terminology as cryptocurrency, virtual currency, bitcoin mining still is pure gibberish.....although it gives me a faint idea but not much...From the simplified definition of bit coin which is a sort of mathematical money system driven by a code still is pure jargon..

Kulukuy , would you mind if you explain this bitcoin in plain tagalog and english...

I'm in the same boat as you are. Most of that nerd stuff in the Bitcoin wiki I linked above pretty much went over my head but like you, I was able to comprehend the general idea of what it's all about. I don't think we need to know all the nerdy stuff to be able to participate in it. Most of us don't exactly know the inner workings of our respective fiat currencies (Dollar, Peso, etc.) or how they came to be but we participate in trading with them nonetheless.

I read the same materials that you've read or you'll be reading on the subject that are available online (Google is our friend). Though I've heard of Bitcoin a year or so ago, I didn't really pay much attention to it until I started to get seriously concerned about and interested in online privacy and anonymity a couple of months ago and started researching into it. My research was very chaotic because of so much material that are available online; haphazardly jumping around from one document to the next which was very inefficient...but I survived and learned some. I'll post the useful links as much as I can but for the purpose of this thread, I would do it in the order that makes sense and not the way I did it. These materials/links are readily available online if you just Google and jump right into it and start trading, mining, paying for purchases and services, donating or whatever it is you want out of Bitcoin but I don't think it's wise to do that without knowing the basics first which is true to any other learning process. I don't think I should re-invent the wheel; it's going to be a lot of work on my part and will be for naught since the wheel already exist.

After learning a little bit of what Bitcoin is all about, here comes the technical part (if mining is what one is interested in). I am "coding and scripting" challenged though I do follow instructions real well and an acceptable common sense/logic to go with it. The mining applications are based on JSON-RPC (please don't ask me the details for this); has something to do with coding/scripting. My understanding is that they are Linux based if that means anything to Linux fans. Luckily for us non-full fledged nerds, they make everything easier for us nowadays. Somebody actually coded a GUI as a front end to launch these mining apps for Windows fans.

Bitcoin is still rocket science to most of us , even the terminology as cryptocurrency, virtual currency, bitcoin mining still is pure gibberish.....although it gives me a faint idea but not much...From the simplified definition of bit coin which is a sort of mathematical money system driven by a code still is pure jargon..

Kulukuy , would you mind if you explain this bitcoin in plain tagalog and english...

I want to learn too how this works and purpose in simple terms.

Here's my questions:1. Who uses this?2. What are needed?3. Benefits?

Like I said, I suggest to at least read the Bitcoin wiki above first. I'm very well aware that the document is somewhat technical (it even says on the page itself) but it still able to present an overview to non-technical folks.

I have actually been considering to devote my available computer resources by participating in a worthwhile distributed computing project like Folding@home but I had been procrastinating because as worthwhile a cause it may be, I also believe that the medical breakthroughs resulting from this collective effort would only end up in the hands of the "pharmas" which in turn would create their pills and eventually profit from human misery by selling their poison to us at an exorbitant price for what cost them a fraction of a penny to manufacture. I've got this thing with pharmas so don't get me started on it.

By utilizing my computing resources to mine for Bitcoins, I at least would get tangible results that I can actually spend for myself and not fattening up some pharma suits some more.

I have actually been considering to devote my available computer resources by participating in a worthwhile distributed computing project like Folding@home but I had been procrastinating because as worthwhile a cause it may be, I also believe that the medical breakthroughs resulting from this collective effort would only end up in the hands of the "pharmas" which in turn would create their pills and eventually profit from human misery by selling their poison to us at an exorbitant price for what cost them a fraction of a penny to manufacture. I've got this thing with pharmas so don't get me started on it.

By utilizing my computing resources to mine for Bitcoins, I at least would get tangible results that I can actually spend for myself and not fattening up some pharma suits some more.

kulukuy wrote:

I have actually been considering to devote my available computer resources by participating in a worthwhile distributed computing project like Folding@home but I had been procrastinating because as worthwhile a cause it may be, I also believe that the medical breakthroughs resulting from this collective effort would only end up in the hands of the "pharmas" which in turn would create their pills and eventually profit from human misery by selling their poison to us at an exorbitant price for what cost them a fraction of a penny to manufacture. I've got this thing with pharmas so don't get me started on it.

By utilizing my computing resources to mine for Bitcoins, I at least would get tangible results that I can actually spend for myself and not fattening up some pharma suits some more.

Don’t be so hard pharma companies... As a chemist I know the complexity and difficulty of synthesizing new drugs, the high cost of investment of running such extremely technical operation plus the several years of animal testing and even evaluation on human volunteers, in some cases it can even take decades before that new drug is approved by the regulating agency for distribution for sale to users....As a whole its not a “mere walk in the park” making a new drug from the scratch actually....

Therefore from the hindsight , the cost of the creation of new drug is astronomical so its reasonable that this companies would recoup their expenses from such monumental effort..that would take years for the ROI( return of investment).

Now how does bit coin come to this picture...what can you do to appease your apprehension about your so called profiteering efforts of the drug firms...?

Does doing the so called bit coin mining, and lending your powerful PC for such would do something...?How can you profit by being an intermediary or a tool for bit coin transaction?

By the way as you started this thread with good computer hardware for such purpose...

What would be the minimum configuration for such PC to satisfy a profitable bit coin participation...? Is it beyond the typical gaming rig....? Is it more graphic than CPU intensive..?Does it need server class computers with hexacore chips, multiple RAM and series of Terabytes of hard drives....?

I have actually been considering to devote my available computer resources by participating in a worthwhile distributed computing project like Folding@home but I had been procrastinating because as worthwhile a cause it may be, I also believe that the medical breakthroughs resulting from this collective effort would only end up in the hands of the "pharmas" which in turn would create their pills and eventually profit from human misery by selling their poison to us at an exorbitant price for what cost them a fraction of a penny to manufacture. I've got this thing with pharmas so don't get me started on it.

By utilizing my computing resources to mine for Bitcoins, I at least would get tangible results that I can actually spend for myself and not fattening up some pharma suits some more.

kulukuy wrote:

I have actually been considering to devote my available computer resources by participating in a worthwhile distributed computing project like Folding@home but I had been procrastinating because as worthwhile a cause it may be, I also believe that the medical breakthroughs resulting from this collective effort would only end up in the hands of the "pharmas" which in turn would create their pills and eventually profit from human misery by selling their poison to us at an exorbitant price for what cost them a fraction of a penny to manufacture. I've got this thing with pharmas so don't get me started on it.

By utilizing my computing resources to mine for Bitcoins, I at least would get tangible results that I can actually spend for myself and not fattening up some pharma suits some more.

Don’t be so hard pharma companies... As a chemist I know the complexity and difficulty of synthesizing new drugs, the high cost of investment of running such extremely technical operation plus the several years of animal testing and even evaluation on human volunteers, in some cases it can even take decades before that new drug is approved by the regulating agency for distribution for sale to users....As a whole its not a “mere walk in the park” making a new drug from the scratch actually....

Therefore from the hindsight , the cost of the creation of new drug is astronomical so its reasonable that this companies would recoup their expenses from such monumental effort..that would take years for the ROI( return of investment).

Now how does bit coin come to this picture...what can you do to appease your apprehension about your so called profiteering efforts of the drug firms...?

Does doing the so called bit coin mining, and lending your powerful PC for such would do something...?How can you profit by being an intermediary or a tool for bit coin transaction?

By the way as you started this thread with good computer hardware for such purpose...

What would be the minimum configuration for such PC to satisfy a profitable bit coin participation...? Is it beyond the typical gaming rig....? Is it more graphic than CPU intensive..?Does it need server class computers with hexacore chips, multiple RAM and series of Terabytes of hard drives....?

My being hard on the pharmas is a personal thing. I understand the process of R&D and that it takes years to synthesize these compounds. I have no problem with all that especially if it benefits mankind. I just don't like how the pharma suits do their business. The reason how it came into the picture was already clearly indicated on my post; the reason why I personally decided not to participate in the Folding@home project and instead opt to devote my resources to BTC mining. That's all. For all we know, Folding@home could have been sanctioned and clandestinely funded by the pharmas themselves. Who knows? Anyway, without dragging this deviation along and run the risk of hijacking my own thread, I leave it at this for everybody to decide for themselves -- the reason why I don't like them:

Again, it's a personal thing and should not be discussed any further; at least not on this thread. It's a discussion that should be on a separate thread if someone cares to start it.

Anyway, back on topic. I don't see mining for BTC is akin to lending my resources to any entity. It's more like my tool or resource to aid me in prospecting for BTC much like the gold prospectors during the gold rush. One of the features of Bitcoin is to get rid of the intermediary or centralized control - central banks, the banks and other traditional financial institutions. Hence, it is maintained through P2P networking/infrastructure.

Just like mining for gold, the better equipped prospectors who can dig faster have more chances of finding more gold in a given time. That translates to a lot of hash power to increase the chances of successfully landing on blocks that result in rewards (a block of 50 BTC at a time).

The rig I posted at the beginning of this thread is really not a powerhouse. It's only an old C2D E6600 Conroe with dual-channel memory on a micro ATX with only one PCIe 16x slot. It's just a test rig to experiment with BTC mining and hoping to build a full on dedicated mining rig eventually (I got my shopping list already). But then again, you don't need bleeding edge CPU and memory to get good hash rates. In fact, RAMs are clocked down as low as 300MHz to save energy and reduce heat in a mining rig. It's all about GPGPU (General-purpose computing on graphics processing unit) which the Radeon GPUs are good at.

The general rules in building a mining rig are: get the cheapest mobo with a lot of PCIe 16x slots (to fill them in with preferred Radeon cards for each of them is a miner), the cheapest CPU (they are useless for mining) for such mobo and 1GB of the cheapest memory (just enough to get the system fired up), a robust certified PSU to support those cards at constant full load and a lot of ventilation (preferrably an open setup like a test bench or a rack system or a homemade setup but an open box with a desk/floor fan directed especially towards the GPUs also works).

Anyway, I'm gonna be posting more links as I find them. Like I said, I should not rewrite how to make a wheel; there are already excellent instructions out there. I'm definitely not an expert on this subject. I'm new at this too.

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